English Language Essay: A Literary Analysis of 'Some Days' by Collins

This essay provides a comprehensive literary analysis of Billy Collins' poem 'Some Days'. It delves into the poem's central theme of control and societal expectations, examining the dollhouse as a key metaphor. The essay explores how Collins uses this imagery to comment on human behavior, comparing individuals to dolls controlled by external forces. The analysis also highlights various literary devices such as similes and imagery employed by the poet to convey his message effectively. The essay discusses the poem's structure, including its stanzas and the overall tone, to provide a deeper understanding of the poem's meaning and impact. The reference list includes the source of the poem.

Running head: ENGLISH LANGUAGE
English Language
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Some Days is a poem which was written by author and poet Billy Collins. In the
poem, the poet tells the readers about the story of the protagonist of the poem and the
dollhouse in which the protagonist of the poem puts his characters and dolls in the dollhouse.
The poem indirectly refers to the readers about the individuals and how that persona is being
controlled by others and at the same time, also controls the others in the poem itself.
The purpose of this essay is to make a literary analysis on the poem “Some Days”
by the author Billy Collins. It will explore what the author tries to say in the poem.
In the poem, the poet has informed the readers about the situations of a persona being
and also at the same time controlling the other individuals. This has been explained by the
poet in the poem with the help of a dollhouse. The poet means to say that in this world, there
are two types of personas – one which controls and the other which gets controlled. The
author compares the dollhouse to the controlled personas and himself to the controlling
persona. In the days to day life of the human beings, it is being said the people are being
dolls. They are being controlled by their lives and the professions in which they belong
(Collins, 2014). This is evidenced by the way they have to arrive at their workplaces at time,
do their work and go home. The normal personas are the dolls and the persona controlling
them is the leaders of the organizations or the companies where they work. This is what the
poet refers in the poem as the persona of controlling and being controlled by the world.
“Some days I put people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature
and fix them into the tiny wooden chair”

2ENGLISH LANGUAGE
In these lines, the poet uses the dolls to compare the life of the humans in the real
world to that of the dolls. The poet tells us that just like the dolls, the humans are also made
to behave in a systematic manner. This means that just like the dolls, the humans are also
made to sit in a proper manner on the chairs. Thus, by controlling the dolls, it can be said that
the poet shows the readers how the readers themselves are being controlled by their work life.
The poet has used the dollhouse as a metaphor the humans being controlled by their jobs.
Some Days is a six-stanza poem in which the poet has used the imagery of the time in
the poem ad compared the time to a brick building instead of comparing it to a continuum
itself. The poem reveals to the readers about the frustrations of the poet at the way that the
humans are being controlled by their jobs, when it should be the other way around. The poet
means to tells the readers that the humans are not free as they believe themselves to be. All
this is mentioned by the author by using the imagery of the dollhouse in the poem.
“All afternoon they face one another
the man in the brown suit
the woman in the blue dress
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved”
Literary devices also form an important part of the poem “Some Days” by the poet
Billy Collins himself (Collins, 2014). One such example of the literary devices in the poem is
the example which the readers find is the simile in the line 18 of the poem “the woman in the
blue dress”. This line also reveals another aspect of the human beings being controlled. The
blue dress of the female doll is symbolic of how a female person should be well dressed and
well behaved herself. This is considered to be an imagery itself because it allows the readers

3ENGLISH LANGUAGE
to imagine the various characters of the poem and the way they appear in the poem itself. All
these imageries, tones and the lines of the poem have been used by the poet in such a way
that it becomes easier for the readers to understand the subject matter of the poem itself.
Reference List
Collins, Billy. Aimless love: New and selected poems. Random House Trade Paperbacks,
2014.

4ENGLISH LANGUAGE